What kind of readability issues will there be for a user with some visual disability? The current default forum platform has high contrast text on white background. Does this new platform have super-cool low contrast that's unreadable for eyes older than 35?

And now I'll tell you what's against us, an art that's lived for centuries. Go through the years and you will find what's blackened all of history. Against us is the law with its immensity of strength and power - against us is the law! Police know how to make a man a guilty or an innocent. Against us is the power of police! The shameless lies that men have told will ever more be paid in gold - against us is the power of the gold! Against us is racial hatred and the simple fact that we are poor. - The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Joan Baez

All warnings and a possible temporary punishment history will be gone; it’s a fresh start, so make sure you profit from this chance.

Coolsies.

It's also interesting that the communities will all be merged into one forum. Hopefully the GenChat crowd in other forums is at least as good as it is here. (Which is to say, despite near-constant flaming, trollbait, and uncontrolled displays of racism, there are still good threads and posters here, but idk how that plays out in a wider community.)

This I do not like, Sam I Am:

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We will move all forum threads (including all the posts in it) of the past 365 days that had at least one reply in the past 180 days.We will move all the forum accounts that were accessed at least once in the past 365 days

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All forum history will be stored into a read-only archive that you'll be able to access. The archive will most likely not be available immediately after the merger because we need to take care about lots of things at once, but we want to assure you that it will be accessible at some point.

Counterpoint -- if you delete a ton of users, how will their posts be accessible in the archives? Counterpoint -- I've disappeared at lengths longer than 365 days and still returned. Counterpoint -- I like having the ability to necro old threads.

Good idea, I like change. I like checking out new stuff and whatnot but the time the forums will be offline is too long.

I agree and questioned that. The reason for the long delay is that its not especially easy to migrate from vb to burning board due to the age of our vb suite, the size of the databases needing to be merged (10+ years of posts and attachments mean it’s a massive task even pruning down to the set limits to be migrated) and ultimately HQ and Woltlabs themselves don’t know how quick or slow it will be. It is hoped the time will be less than stated if the migration goes smoothly, then there will be a period of time for me and the mod team to re-assemble the forum. Effectively everything will get dumped into one big bucket for each domain, albeit threads will be grouped by originating forum.I will then have to verify each thread IE it meets the set of rules used on the new forum and move it into its correct location.

What kind of readability issues will there be for a user with some visual disability? The current default forum platform has high contrast text on white background. Does this new platform have super-cool low contrast that's unreadable for eyes older than 35?

Good question, I don’t know the answer so I will ask HQ for a response on this one.

It's also interesting that the communities will all be merged into one forum. Hopefully the GenChat crowd in other forums is at least as good as it is here. (Which is to say, despite near-constant flaming, trollbait, and uncontrolled displays of racism, there are still good threads and posters here, but idk how that plays out in a wider community.)

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The flaming, trollbait and such will have to stop. I have been quite lenient on the general chat area as explained in September last year to lessen the impact of the rules changes. Now that leniency will have to stop as we migrate to the merged forum with a single set of rules and multiple CM’s over seeing it. Swearing, trolling, and inappropriate discussions (including politics) will have to end as they are against HQs policy’s. There will be no DLZ, or dump.The tavern section won’t have a post count – we do value our community and we also like chit-chat, but we do not think this directly contributes to Travian life, therefore we decided to remove the post count and activity points in this section.From that read that HQ want better management and control over general chat as they don’t see it as contributing to the company image. Things will get much stricter especially as the forum will be overseen by other CM’s, SCMs and HQ staff.

Counterpoint -- if you delete a ton of users, how will their posts be accessible in the archives?Counterpoint -- I've disappeared at lengths longer than 365 days and still returned.Counterpoint -- I like having the ability to necro old threads.

The deletion of history is a shame.

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The wording HQ has used is not clear. To be clear this forum will be frozen on the 16th July and put into maintenance mode. The posts that meet HQs criteria will be merged into the new database the forum as it currently is will be preserved in a backup for restoration as a read only archive at a later date. This was an area that I discussed at length as the original HQ plan was to just delete old stuff. To me loosing 10+ years of domain history was not acceptable and I said as much during the HQ/CM planning meeting. Since then we have been assured that the forum data will be retained as an archive to be put somewhere at a later date so people can read back. I don’t know the details on the archive yet as HQ are still working on a sollution that is acceptable to both them and the global community.Users who have not logged in for 365 days will not be moved to the new forum but when the backup is loaded into an archive you will still be able to look at old accounts and posts, they just wont be linked to the new forum in anyway.Over the next few weeks I will be moving everything that does not meet HQ’s migration policy to the archive. If you think a thread should be retained on the new forum I will consider each case by exception. Please email me to discuss further at cm@travian.us or skype hudsonm856 (please state you are from the US forum when you add me as a contact otherwise you might get declined)I will also be talking with the moderators and ambassadors to ensure key threads are retained even if they do not adhear to HQs policy, this is again by exception.

All change is hard, thank you for being so informative and clear about what is going on.

I will happily stretch HQs rules to explain something if I feel its important for the community to understand why something is happening. That said please understand I cant explain everything in detail due to confidentiality clauses in my contract

I am not surprised at this given Kingdoms has been using Burning Board. For those interested here is the link. While I'm sure it will have some uniqueness to it, I think it at least gives us an idea of what to expect.

The integration of the communities to a single forum is important for the future, particularly with the Tournament system. I can invision additional changes related to the game once the forums are complete that will bring us closer together and create a more cohesive system. Travian is not the same game it was in 2005, and while it has made improvements and misteps over the years each change has been more of a tack on. This will wipe the board clean and integrate what is now a global community and I think it will improve the experience in the end. (Assuming HQ is listening to our wants and needs, the April Fools Annoucement while in poor taste at least suggests they are)

I predicted the difficulites in retaining the old and I am glad they opted for the archive route. Deletion as you said would be simply unacceptable.

Hudson -1. What changes in the rules might we expect? / When might we get to see them?

2. The way I read your post, political discussions will be banned entirely? That seems rather severe a course of action. I get why they would rather avoid it, as it can quickly devolve into undesirable actions. However politics is what I would describe as a major topic area and I feel those who wish to discuss it should be allowed to. Of course as an American I probably have a broader interpertation of Free Speech than many of those working in HQ. (Who I assume tend to be German or European) While I don't engage in political discussion here, I believe those who wish to deserve the ability to do so. The concern for the "company image" is all well and good but frankly the ability of the community to interact and engage with each other on subjects other than Travian is vital to a vibrant and dedicated community. Travian is a fun game but I stay for the people and the connections I make with them. I think the removal of political discussions decreases the subject matter severly on what might be discussed in an open forum and as a result hurt existing connections and block future ones from forming.

Edit:As a side note, it doesn't seem cost effective to keep all of the CM's. This is especially true regarding English domains (currently 6 by my count). There isn't exactly a huge amount of players between them. At my last count in Feb. I counted 36,626 between the 6 domains. A farcry from the days the U.S Domain peaked over 100k. So will any of the CM's be let go, have a change in roles etc.? More specifrically I am concerned about your job since you are fantastic in your role and TG needs more people like you. The same concern might extend to the Mod team as well, though I'm not familiar with the compensation structure if any.

Though this does bring up a third point and obviously you can only say so much, but might this indicate the merging of domains in some fashion? Whether it means restructuring them all to .COM, while perhaps retaining some national servers instead of entire domains or something else entirely? It would seem like the next logical step after forum intergration would be some change in how domains / servers and the tournament works.

I am not surprised at thisgiven Kingdoms has been using Burning Board. For those interested here is the link. While I'm sure itwill have some uniqueness to it, I think it at least gives us an idea of whatto expect.

The integration of the communities to a single forum is important for thefuture, particularly with the Tournament system. I can invision additionalchanges related to the game once the forums are complete that will bring uscloser together and create a more cohesive system. Travian is not the same gameit was in 2005, and while it has made improvements and misteps over the yearseach change has been more of a tack on. This will wipe the board clean andintegrate what is now a global community and I think it will improve theexperience in the end. (Assuming HQ is listening to our wants and needs, theApril Fools Annoucement while in poor taste at least suggests they are)

I predicted the difficulites in retaining the old and I am glad they opted forthe archive route. Deletion as you said would be simply unacceptable.

Hudson -1. What changes in the rules might we expect? / When might we get to see them?

2. The way I read your post, political discussions will be banned entirely?That seems rather severe a course of action. I get why they would rather avoidit, as it can quickly devolve into undesirable actions. However politics iswhat I would describe as a major topic area and I feel those who wish todiscuss it should be allowed to. Of course as an American I probably have abroader interpertation of Free Speech than many of those working in HQ. (Who Iassume tend to be German or European) While I don't engage in politicaldiscussion here, I believe those who wish to deserve the ability to do so. Theconcern for the "company image" is all well and good but frankly theability of the community to interact and engage with each other on subjectsother than Travian is vital to a vibrant and dedicated community. Travian is afun game but I stay for the people and the connections I make with them. Ithink the removal of political discussions decreases the subject matter severlyon what might be discussed in an open forum and as a result hurt existingconnections and block future ones from forming.

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I cant speak of future plans but I can assure you that as a contracted HQ representative I do listen and feedback the community’s thoughts, wishesand often the rants as well. HQ respond on a weekly basis although many of thediscussions are internal your comments are well represented. I cant always get them to agree to changes but I have had some success in getting things changed (allowing relaxed rule for US gen chat,retaining an archive for the current forum being two such instances where HQhave changed things based on points I raised)

The rules are basically what we already use for the USforum (Excluding GenChat) and can be found at the top of the forum on the navbar. The reason for a ban on politics is that HQ has beenbanned from a number of country’s in the past due to comments made on forums.(iran I believe was one such domain in the past that had issues). It is common for company’s across the worldto restrict what is posted on their forums. HQ own the forum and its provided on a grace and favor basis IE it doesnot make money and they can remove it/anything they don’t want.In this day and age of SEO what is posted on a companyforum is important. Some of the more extreme views and comments do appear onsearch engines and that is an issue to the company. Previous crew members will remember thisbeing raised previously as an issue on US where HQ did a review of all domainsand found issues. This is why we now have the two-account system for crewmembers. As it stands HQs policy is the new forum is not the placefor real-world politics it’s a game forum not reddit or other such discussionarenas. I get both sides of the argument and perhaps once things have settledon the new forum then we can renegotiate the rules.

I do see your point. From a financial perspective it does make a lot of sense to ban political discussions otherwise they face banning in potential markets and losing on a large customer base. While I don't know how large Iran is in terms of potential Travian players, China is an obvious market that has similar censorship measures on political issues. The potential loss of players is greatly outweighed by the size of those markets.

By integrating the communities you also need to standarize rules, and when the communities have different values, norms and laws that can result in changes being made that might offend some. Some might hold a grudge about the issue but in the grand scheme it is a small thing, this isn't Reddit as you said. (Or any other social media platform etc.) Hopefully those who currently engage in political discussions opt to forgive.

Thank you as always for the detailed response, the level of communication you provide definitely makes any changes etc. easier on the community.

P.S - I assumed I wouldn't get the answers about the future but it never hurts to ask. You might slip up :p

The tavern section won’t have a post count – we do value our community and we also like chit-chat, but we do not think this directly contributes to Travian life, therefore we decided to remove the post count and activity points in this section.

Will I get to keep my perks -- inbox size and the like -- from having so many posts and so much rep?

From that read that HQ want better management and control over general chat as they don’t see it as contributing to the company image. Things will get much stricter especially as the forum will be overseen by other CM’s, SCMs and HQ staff.

@BlackTiger - thank you for the link. I see they have indeed chosen a forum platform that reduces the contrast between text and background, though it is still readable, with a bit more effort. It could be worse.

Grumble, grumble, kids on my lawn, grumble.

And now I'll tell you what's against us, an art that's lived for centuries. Go through the years and you will find what's blackened all of history. Against us is the law with its immensity of strength and power - against us is the law! Police know how to make a man a guilty or an innocent. Against us is the power of police! The shameless lies that men have told will ever more be paid in gold - against us is the power of the gold! Against us is racial hatred and the simple fact that we are poor. - The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Joan Baez

Will I get to keep my perks -- inbox size and the like -- from having so many posts and so much rep?

Good. That section has been out of hand.

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The picture thread does not meet HQ criteria for migration due to its age, it may be possible to save it however given the size and number of images in the thread it may not migrate successfully anyway.

No all perks you have here will be gone. Everyone will have only the HQ proscribed inbox etc. Post count will only be based on the posts migrated and reputation will cease to exist in its current form (I believe there is some kind of activity point system based on being scored for top answer in Q&A and post likes)

@BlackTiger - thank you for the link. I see they have indeed chosen a forum platform that reduces the contrast between text and background, though it is still readable, with a bit more effort. It could be worse.

Grumble, grumble, kids on my lawn, grumble.

T:L forum will not be the same as T:K due to having different artwork and color scheme.

I have asked HQ to comment on high contrast style option which I believe may be a requirement under Current German law.Also because T:L uses multi-lingual settings you shouldn't see all the other language posts, just the languages you subscribe to. (EN[defaults to UK], EN-US, EN-COM, EN-AU DE etc)

All the account names will get the country tag as a suffix in order to avoid duplicates. You will then be able to change your nickname into a new one if you like.

We will merge all forum accounts from different communities that have the same email (all the threads/posts will be merged), so if you have accounts on more than one Travian: Legends forum, please make sure you use the same email with them, as you won’t be allowed to use more then one account on the new forum and it won’t be possible to merge them anymore after we started the process.

When it comes to the account merging, I take it this means we get to pick the username of the merged account?

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The tavern section won’t have a post count – we do value our community and we also like chit-chat, but we do not think this directly contributes to Travian life, therefore we decided to remove the post count and activity points in this section.

I disagree with these sentiments.In my experience, and I'm sure the experience of many other long time users here, Gen Chat is where we tend to move after periods of game play. A number of us do return to playing after a break. I know I have and Burn has indicated in this thread he is also the same. To disregard our experience and the potentiality of return may drive the stake into those of us who may have otherwise considered dipping our toes back in the water at a later date.

To use another example, the vast majority of my posts and rep come from the T&P subforum yet I would not be recognised with this change. How much longer would it have taken for you to identify the potential I was able to represent if this recognition wasn't there prior? I used myself for this particular example yet I feel a larger portion of our older community are also in this situation.

A different comparison that can be made is the only active Ambassador that gained their position primarily from the Embassies are Lord Bane and Tivon (and Tivon has no recent activity other than logging in and out). Tineren gained his recognition from Q&A. Woden, Valynor, Dan Chak and myself were recognised for T&P. Flossie and Meherrin were more rounded overall. This change basically says that only one of these people is valued by TG and that is Lord Bane. Would this fit in line with the current and future vision you had for the Ambassador usergroup?

The way I interpret it, no it won't vanish although the content will be come available for all to view. Still, clarification would be grand.

EDIT: I see this was touched on before I finished my post. I would recommend this thread be migrated even if all the links don't work. IMO, it is one of the best threads on the forum for a number of reasons.

Will I get to keep my perks -- inbox size and the like -- from having so many posts and so much rep?

This is something I've been wondering about.I would think that rep could be treated as a +1 / -1 which would be representative of like and dislike. I only saw indication of likes being implemented which to me signals -rep would disappear.No idea if that is how it is being done but it is the way I would imagine it happening.

As for the perks, I've only read that everyone would be grouped into the same user class. Whether that means everyone becomes the equivalent of a Consul, I'm unsure. With how .com is, it leads me to think it will be the case.

EDIT: I see this was also touched on. In that case, what are the base HQ proscribed privileges?

Jonothan Crane wrote:

Patients suffering delusional episodes often focus their paranoia on an external tormentor. Usually one conforming to Jungian archetypes. In this case, a scarecrow.

I disagree with these sentiments.In my experience, and I'm sure the experience of many other long time users here, Gen Chat is where we tend to move after periods of game play. A number of us do return to playing after a break. I know I have and Burn has indicated in this thread he is also the same. To disregard our experience and the potentiality of return may drive the stake into those of us who may have otherwise considered dipping our toes back in the water at a later date.

To use another example, the vast majority of my posts and rep come from the T&P subforum yet I would not be recognised with this change. How much longer would it have taken for you to identify the potential I was able to represent if this recognition wasn't there prior? I used myself for this particular example yet I feel a larger portion of our older community are also in this situation.

A different comparison that can be made is the only active Ambassador that gained their position primarily from the Embassies are Lord Bane and Tivon (and Tivon has no recent activity other than logging in and out). Tineren gained his recognition from Q&A. Woden, Valynor, Dan Chak and myself were recognised for T&P. Flossie and Meherrin were more rounded overall. This change basically says that only one of these people is valued by TG and that is Lord Bane. Would this fit in line with the current and future vision you had for the Ambassador usergroup?

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HQ have said they plan on a single user group of registered user, I am trying to encourage keeping a senior/ambassador group but its unlikely that will happen before migration which makes this point outside of their scope. 90% of issues (spam etc) on global forums occur in the genchat/games area so HQ have come up with a solution to prevent spam and contentious issues. I'm not saying its the right decision but its unlikely to change before the migration. It will be fed back to HQ for consideration and hopefully this will change in future.

The way I interpret it, no it won't vanish although the content will be come available for all to view. Still, clarification would be grand.

EDIT: I see this was touched on before I finished my post. I would recommend this thread be migrated even if all the links don't work. IMO, it is one of the best threads on the forum for a number of reasons.

Due to image sizes and number of images its possible the thread will break on migration leaving a useless jumble of broken attachment links -- But that's a worse case scenario. I will wait for sysadmins to advise on the maximum limits on thread migration.

.com should serve as a decent example of what we can and cannot do when it comes to the scope of the rules. They have a games section there where Mafia would fit. My intuition says yes.

I see no reason for mafia (or WvV as other domains call it) not to continue. We may need to archive old rounds once they end (there will be continual maintenance on the new forum to prune and archive old posts/threads)

This is something I've been wondering about.I would think that rep could be treated as a +1 / -1 which would be representative of like and dislike. I only saw indication of likes being implemented which to me signals -rep would disappear.No idea if that is how it is being done but it is the way I would imagine it happening.

As for the perks, I've only read that everyone would be grouped into the same user class. Whether that means everyone becomes the equivalent of a Consul, I'm unsure. With how .com is, it leads me to think it will be the case.

EDIT: I see this was also touched on. In that case, what are the base HQ proscribed privileges?

From what I have seen there will be no negative rep system. Much like facebook you can give someone a like and then remove it but you cant take something you haven't given in the first place. The points will be on a sliding scale I believe with more points given for a correct answer in the Q&A section than for someone likening your post. More details will be released in future announcements.

HQ have not released information on user accounts, this should come in a future update but I agree it should be somewhere equivalent to consul level (that how UK works anyway)

[The tavern section won’t have a post count – we do value our community and we also like chit-chat, but we do not think this directly contributes to Travian life, therefore we decided to remove the post count and activity points in this section.From that read that HQ want better management and control over general chat as they don’t see it as contributing to the company image. Things will get much stricter especially as the forum will be overseen by other CM’s, SCMs and HQ staff.

I have more of a problem with this than any other change (although I am a bit peeved about the loss of rep and those who will lose their rank titles).

This IS the problem a lot of us have been complaining about for years. TG doesn't get it. We don't play this game because TRAVIAN! At the end of the day, we play this game because of the friends we make.

I get that they have a self-perceived 'image' to uphold. Not all of these new rules and processes, however, relate directly to that. The stated reasons are counter-intuitive: chit chat does not contribute directly to Travian Life? Chit Chat IS Travian life. It is the tie that bonds us, after each round ends. It is what keeps us going mid way through a long round when we want to quit because we are simply exhausted. It IS why we play.

The relationships we make keep this game alive. The forum, the game? Simply the restaurant we choose to visit on our 'date', because we share the same taste in food. Change the quality or taste of the restaurant too much for the worse, OUR perceived worse and NOT management's, and we simply go elsewhere to eat.

I'm also concerned about certain issues that may be forced on us by the laws of other countries. I understand that political posts will be out. Ok, i can talk politics elsewhere. But. I'm drawing on the recent experience of LiveJournal, where I had an archived account, recently being overhauled by the Russian owners.

In many of the countries in which Travian is played, being gay is illegal. If, in a post that is not political in intent, I should happen to mention that my good friend Nancy and her wife came to visit, would that be deemed something inappropriate? Or if I shoukd mention that I myself am bisexual?

How restricted will we be by TG's desire to offend no one?

And now I'll tell you what's against us, an art that's lived for centuries. Go through the years and you will find what's blackened all of history. Against us is the law with its immensity of strength and power - against us is the law! Police know how to make a man a guilty or an innocent. Against us is the power of police! The shameless lies that men have told will ever more be paid in gold - against us is the power of the gold! Against us is racial hatred and the simple fact that we are poor. - The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Joan Baez

I have more of a problem with this than any other change (although I am a bit peeved about the loss of rep and those who will lose their rank titles).

This IS the problem a lot of us have been complaining about for years. TG doesn't get it. We don't play this game because TRAVIAN! At the end of the day, we play this game because of the friends we make.

I get that they have a self-perceived 'image' to uphold. Not all of these new rules and processes, however, relate directly to that. The stated reasons are counter-intuitive: chit chat does not contribute directly to Travian Life? Chit Chat IS Travian life. It is the tie that bonds us, after each round ends. It is what keeps us going mid way through a long round when we want to quit because we are simply exhausted. It IS why we play.

The relationships we make keep this game alive. The forum, the game? Simply the restaurant we choose to visit on our 'date', because we share the same taste in food. Change the quality or taste of the restaurant too much for the worse, OUR perceived worse and NOT management's, and we simply go elsewhere to eat.

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That was a much better way of articulating what I was trying to get across.I came about it the wrong way by using Ambassadors as examples so it appeared I was speaking more about user groups than the value that T&P holds.

Jonothan Crane wrote:

Patients suffering delusional episodes often focus their paranoia on an external tormentor. Usually one conforming to Jungian archetypes. In this case, a scarecrow.